The light is lurking somewhere in the moment. Somewhere in the distance and beyond practical solutions and rational discourse is the home of the insufferable and indistinguishable light of consciousness.

Heroes come in many forms, though rarely among the wretched, the weary and the disgusting souls from beggar roots in Calcutta and Lima and Sao Paulo and Los Angeles.

Living in misery, squalor and filth; wholly disenfranchised from the universal perceptions of sustainability, the heroes are but of millions in a vast wasteland of the human capital left behind to rot in the pits of our own disregard.

Such is the lot of the human race. Such is the lot of our collective psyche.

If all life is indeed suffering and ending desire obliterates suffering, then what of the archetypes of our own construct that are inherent in humanity? continue reading…

As Carl Sagan would say; there are billions and billions and billions of stars. Throughout human history, men and women and children have looked to the sky with amazement and curiosity. I know I was one of them… and still am.

My first experience with modern space exploration came when I was about 7 years old. That is when I watched The Right Stuff. Much of the movie was above my head, but it gave me a firm grasp on our nation’s path toward space, both historically and within the context of modern space exploration.

About a year later, I was home sick from school watching the Price is Right, as was customary for me in 3rd grade, when Bob Barker was interrupted by breaking news: the Challenger Space Shuttle had blown up shortly after launch. I suppose I was somewhat devastated to hear the news as I was always mesmerized by space and space exploration. I would later go on to read the books and watch the television series The Cosmosby Carl Sagan at the age of 12 and later graduate to the more palatable writings of Stephen Hawking and Buckminster Fuller.

My curiosity of space and space exploration has never waned. However, I have had grave reservations about the course of our nation’s space ambitions for many years as the outdated Shuttle program has continued to prove to be little more than an exercise in futility as the cost of the bloated NASA budget, funded by taxpayer money, has produced little tangible successes and many, many failures resulting in the deaths of the Astronauts aboard the Challenger and later, Columbia. continue reading…

The downfall of the American Farmer is quite a unique example of modern corporatism manifested through what is the equivalency of serfdom for those across the nation who try to survive as independent farmers. As the large and powerful forces of Agri-Business consolidate their stranglehold on the American Farmer (as well as global consolidation of agricultural production), we the people continue to subsidize a system which is: eliminating the diversity of food sources; perpetuating devastation to the environment; poisoning our food with harmful pesticides that have been proven to be linked to numerous diseases; and furthering the profit-driven motives of corporations who view the American Farmer as merely a commodity to be exploited, duped, used and manipulated for their continuing attempt at controlling the world’s food supply.

This issue is quite personal as I come from a very long line of farmers. Going back hundreds of years in Ireland, parts of my family have existed through toiling in the fields to provide sustenance for their own survival and the survival of those who are nourished by the fruits of their labor. I still have family in Ireland that sustains a living from farming and those in my family that came to the United States over a hundred years ago, migrated to the midwest and continue to farm to this day, though they are most assuredly the last of four generations to sustain a living through farming as the collusion of Agri-Business and Banking have put them and all farmers in massive debt and left them with only one option: grow what they tell them to grow with only the genetically limited seeds they allow them to grow with and make sure that those crops are saturated with the dangerous chemicals that they require them to use. continue reading…

Ren and Stimpy: the quintessential dynamic duo of interspecies peace and harmony. Thus begins the journey of dialectical and existential actualization through the cartoons of my youth. Perhaps my global schema has more to do with the life lessons to be learned through the magical medium of cartoons than with anything I done lerned in my skooluns.

The Smurfs: definitely commies

I was a dedicated viewer of the smurfs from about age five to age eight. Such an amusing group of blue miscreants prancing around their village, sharing in all the wealth and riches of the forest. Essentially, a very communitarian conclave in which every smurf had a unique talent to add to the proper functioning of smurf society.

Quite obviously, the smurfs were Communists. Come on: sharing the wealth; every smurf got a free home and free health care — I’m assuming a free ride on Smurfette as well; she must have been pretty warn out. I suppose Papa Smurf had some sort of authoritarian and fascist inclinations, not quite so much a Stalin as a Jim Jones type of leader — sans the strychnine-laced kool-aide.continue reading…

I am not one that typically likes to involve themselves in issues or social movements that anyone with moderate intelligence could deduce to be completely irrational and/or counter intuitive to one’s well-being. But lately I’ve been barraged by the “small government is better” crowd, not necessarily a part of the tea party, but coming from the same philosophical ilk nonetheless. Hell, I’ve even talked with some “liberal” democrats buying into to some of this toxic rhetoric from the ill-informed.

To give them a simplified critique: the oppressive taxes you pay (the lowest Americans have paid in over 60 years) go toward building and maintaining roads, schools, fireman, policemen, protecting us from foreign invasion, making sure our food and water is (somewhat) safe to eat and drink and on and on and on….

Again, that is a very simplistic analysis — don’t worry, it’ll get more pedantic as the caffeine kicks in. This leads to the clever title; when will, if ever, cognitive dissonance kick in for those of the belief that government is always the enemy no matter what? For those who aren’t up on social psychology, cognitive dissonance is simply holding two contradictory views at once. continue reading…